2011-07-04: What A Shame

[Madayar]

Sarine: "Yeah."

Blam-Blam-Blam - Anita's Face frozen

Anita falls down forward.

John, reloading: "No."

We had enough drama, enough "I'm the greatest", enough "My balls are bigger than your balls although we both are female" - time to drop the hag and get back to the real issue which is the rampant half-elf.

Also, I'm absolutely starved to see a main plot character bite the dust. Normally I prefer the lawful, the just way, but Anita's too damn powerful to ever stand trial. Sadly, that's the only option to take her out of the picture. No reason not to make it quick.

Alas, Poe has already declared that it will be regrettably long, so I guess we're gonna see another lightsabre...I mean Durus Flamma duel.

"There is a future in which I can see only mist and a single flying cat."

[the_leander]

Sarine: "Yeah."

Blam-Blam-Blam - Anita's Face frozen

Anita falls down forward.

John, reloading: "No."

Oh please let this be.

[Disciple of Sakura]

Nice reference to Blade of the Immortal there, btw.

[eee]

Until Ian drops the force field keeping them all there, the Ensigerium don't have much use for orders.

All of the monks should be comfortable fighting on their own hooks. Operating solo or in senior/junior pairs is the only way we've seen them operate so far, it's probable that Anita doesn't even have a command structure beyond having made it clear that this operation is over as soon as Ian lets them out of the mountain. Which she's already done.

The Ensigerum may be comfortable fighting solo; the problem is, that may not be how the Elves are fighting. Elves tend to value teamwork; we've seen before that when a Elf goes down, others take up the slack while someone leaps to heal the wounded*. Since Sarine's forces consist of most of the elves with fighting experience, I would imagine they're using small group tactics in dealing with the Ensigerum. Whatever they're doing, it seems to be working: Sara's run took her through the midst of the fighting, and it looked like the Elves were at least holding their own...

(That run is another reason I don't think much of Anita's leadership. The only way she and Paul could have shown up where Sara and Jon did was by following Sara. They would have seen the same fighting we did. They should have known the Ensigerum were taking unacceptable losses, and needed direction to deal with the Elven attack. Instead, Anita wasted time on two secondary problems, and more time telling them she was going to kill them instead of just killing them. That's not the way to win wars.)

*The Ensigerum probably have healing magics of their own - SOMEbody fixed Sara's thumb after she broke it to slip out of the restraints in the Dwarf city, and the only options were her or Meji - but self healing only works if you're alive and conscious enough to do it.

[Ged]

People trying not to get killed don't need their COs breathing down their necks trying to explain a new plan they'll have to implement with people they've never really worked with. That sort of thing's something you do before you turn up to the tussle; once you're there it's too late.

[samwisethemadd]

Nice reference to Blade of the Immortal there, btw.

argh beat me to it, but seriously its appreciated

[ChunLing]

Lest I seem to be trivializing the issues of command and doctrine involved, I will point out that the Ensigerium are specifically trained to deal with being heavily outnumbered and "outclassed" in standard measures of force. Nothing we have seen about their culture and history suggests that there is an ethos of rescuing any monks who fall behind or are cut off. Also, even when working in instructor/novice pairs, they tend to choose individual action over working in concert. We have seen this, and everything we can guess about time-ninjutsu suggests that communication between multiple monks is technically challenging. At the very least, it requires each monk to maintain an identical time-flow with each other monk while using telepathy. We have never seen it used between more than a pair of monks and never at distance.

Anita's badassery notwithstanding, I suspect that it would have been impossible for her to do more than maintain communication with Paul while they were chasing down even an encumbered novice. The other monks aren't just unused to trying to follow orders while engaged in non-trivial combat, they might not have even realized the possibility that Anita would want to give those orders they are all currently too busy to follow.

Still, Anita has already given the only useful order she could in this situation. "As soon as Ian lets us out of here, we're leaving!" That the conditions of this order being invoked have not been met is not Anita's fault.

Of course, I'm less interested in saving the lives of the Ensigerium than in having them...well, you know the rest.

[Flintlock]

I'm still convinced it's all gonna go Indiana Jones on us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anEuw8F8cpE

[Alberich]

I'm still convinced it's all gonna go Indiana Jones on us:

Could be...

Sarine: "I challenge you to a fair fight"

Anita: "Sure!" - then - "No time for it" (attempts to "cheat" with time magic)

Sarine: (Foils the cheat)

Anita: "Oh, okay, let's have a fair fight then."

Sarine: (Feels quite entitled to do something else)

[Ged]

"I wanted to fight fair," *Blam-BLAM-BLAM* "But we don't always get what we want."

Hmm. You would think someone who's been alive for as long as Sarine would have very wide sleeves for her tricks - but we haven't seen many from her to date. I'm thinking they're going to have to kung-fu fight.